The West Port Book Festival is a book festival which is held in Edinburgh

Edinburgh

Edinburgh is the capital city of Scotland, the second largest city in Scotland, and the eighth most populous in the United Kingdom. The City of Edinburgh Council governs one of Scotland's 32 local government council areas. The council area includes urban Edinburgh and a rural area...

. It was run during the busy Edinburgh Festival

Edinburgh Festival

The Edinburgh Festival is a collective term for many arts and cultural festivals that take place in Edinburgh, Scotland each summer, mostly in August...

 season for its first years, but it now takes place in June. This year's festival runs from 24th - 27th June.

The festival was first run in 2008 for a four day stretch from 14 - 17 August. The 2009 festival took place between 13 - 16 August. It is of note due to its use of many working second-hand book shop venues in the West Port

West Port, Edinburgh

West Port is a street in Edinburgh's Old Town, Scotland, located just south of Edinburgh Castle. It runs from Main Point down to the south west corner of the Grassmarket...

 for most of the events, and its insistence on free tickets for entry. Although the West Port Book Festival has received some coverage claiming it was a formal rival to the much larger Edinburgh International Book Festival

Edinburgh International Book Festival

The Edinburgh International Book Festival, is a book festival that takes place in the last three weeks of August every year in Charlotte Square, in the centre of Edinburgh, Scotland’s capital...

, the organisers stated that it was designed to complement rather than to challenge its much more famous cousin.

Programme

2008

The first festival included some well known Scottish writers, as well as up and coming authors from around the world, including Ali Smith

Ali Smith

Ali Smith is a British writer.She was born to working-class parents, raised in a council house in Inverness and now lives in Cambridge. She studied at the University of Aberdeen and then at Newnham College, Cambridge, for a PhD that was never finished. She worked as a lecturer at University of...

, Ian Rankin

Ian Rankin

Ian Rankin, OBE, DL , is a Scottish crime writer. His best known books are the Inspector Rebus novels. He has also written several pieces of literary criticism.-Background:He attended Beath High School, Cowdenbeath...

, Douglas Dunn

Douglas Dunn

Douglas Eaglesham Dunn, OBE is a Scottish poet, academic, and critic. He currently lives in Scotland.-Background:Dunn was born in Inchinnan, Renfrewshire. He was educated at the Scottish School of Librarianship, and worked as a librarian before he started his studies in Hull...

, A. L. Kennedy

A. L. Kennedy

Alison Louise Kennedy is a Scottish writer of novels, short stories and non-fiction. She is known for a characteristically dark tone, a blending of realism and fantasy, and for her serious approach to her work...

, Kapka Kassabova

Kapka Kassabova

Kapka Kassabova is a poet, essayist and travel writer who was born in Sofia, Bulgaria in 1973. After leaving Bulgaria as a teenager and living in England and New Zealand, she now resides in Edinburgh, Scotland....

, Ronan Sheehan

Ronan Sheehan

right|thumb|Ronan Sheehan at the [[West Port Book Festival]]Ronan Sheehan is an Irish novelist, short story writer and essayist. He was an early member of the Irish Writers' Co-operative and its Secretary from 1975 to 1983. He received the Rooney Prize for Irish Literature in 1984...

, Rajorshi Chakraborti

Rajorshi Chakraborti

right|thumb|160px|Rajorshi Chakraborti at the [[West Port Book Festival]]Rajorshi Chakraborti is an Indian novelist and academic. He was born in 1977 in Kolkata, and grew up there and in Mumbai. He attended the Lester B...

, Dilys Rose

Dilys Rose

Dilys Rose is a Scottish poet and fiction writer, born in 1954 in Glasgow and now based in Edinburgh. She has been teaching Creative Writing at Edinburgh University since 2001.-Poetry:* Madame Doubtfire's Dilemma, Chapman, 1989...

, Dean Parkin, Robert Alan Jamieson

Robert Alan Jamieson

Robert Alan Jamieson is a Scottish and Shetlandic poet and novelist who grew up on the crofting community of Sandness. He is currently based in Edinburgh, Scotland, where he works as a Creative Writing tutor at Edinburgh University...

, Owen Dudley Edwards

Owen Dudley Edwards

Owen Dudley Edwards was born in Dublin, Ireland in July 1938. He is the son of Professor Robert Dudley Edwards and brother to the Irish writer, Ruth Dudley Edwards....

, and many others.

2009

As well as featuring poets John Hegley

John Hegley

John Richard Hegley is an English performance poet, comedian, musician and songwriter.-Early life:He was born in the Newington Green area of Islington, London, England, into a Roman Catholic household. He was brought up in Luton and Bristol...

, Tim Turnbull, Jack Underwood

Jack Underwood

John Patrick Underwood was a professional football player from Hinckley, Minnesota. After attending high school in Duluth, Underwood made his professional debut in the National Football League with the hometown Duluth Kelleys. He played for the Kelleys , Chicago Cardinals, and Pottsville Maroons....

, Douglas Dunn and 2009 Forward Poetry Prize

Forward Poetry Prize

The Forward Poetry Prizes were created in 1991. The aim of the prizes is to extend the audience for contemporary poetry. Until the T.S. Eliot Prize remuneration was increased to £15,000 plus £1000 to each of nine runners-up, the Forward was the United Kingdom's most valuable annual poetry...

 nominee J. O. Morgan, novelists Alan Bissett

Alan Bissett

Alan Bissett is an author and playwright from Hallglen, an area of Falkirk in Scotland. After the publication of his first two novels, Boyracers and The Incredible Adam Spark, he became known for his different take on Scots dialect writing, evolving a style specific to Falkirk, suffused with...

, Eleanor Thom

Eleanor Thom

Eleanor Thom was born in London in 1979. She is a British writer who won a major UK creative writing competition, New Writing Ventures 2006, with "Burns", a chapter from her first novel "The Tin-Kin" . The book recalls experiences of her mother's family who were Scottish Travellers and settled in...

, Elaine di Rollo, Mike Stocks and Gregory Norminton

Gregory Norminton

Gregory Norminton is a novelist born in Berkshire, England, in 1976.Educated at Wellington College, he read English at Regent's Park College, Oxford and studied acting at the London Academy of Music and Dramatic Art...

, the 2009 festival also featured a Celtic contingent in the form of Gaelic

Gaels

The Gaels or Goidels are speakers of one of the Goidelic Celtic languages: Irish, Scottish Gaelic, and Manx. Goidelic speech originated in Ireland and subsequently spread to western and northern Scotland and the Isle of Man....

 novelist, poet and actor Angus Peter Campbell

Angus Peter Campbell

Angus Peter Campbell is a Scottish award-winning poet, novelist, journalist, broadcaster and actor.-Early life:...

 and a group of celebrated Irish

Irish people

The Irish people are an ethnic group who originate in Ireland, an island in northwestern Europe. Ireland has been populated for around 9,000 years , with the Irish people's earliest ancestors recorded having legends of being descended from groups such as the Nemedians, Fomorians, Fir Bolg, Tuatha...

 writers with translations of bawdy poet Catullus

Catullus

Gaius Valerius Catullus was a Latin poet of the Republican period. His surviving works are still read widely, and continue to influence poetry and other forms of art.-Biography:...

, events highlighting unusual non-fiction and magic, and played host to the world's first literary twestival

Twitter

Twitter is an online social networking and microblogging service that enables its users to send and read text-based posts of up to 140 characters, informally known as "tweets".Twitter was created in March 2006 by Jack Dorsey and launched that July...

. In this edition there were participating also two Spanish poets, Jesús Ge and Rocío Ovalle, with their event "The Word Whirling".